There are many signs indicating the regeneration of the banking industry. As McKinsey observe in their insight "Remaking the Bank for an Ecosystem World", the financial crisis is complete, stocks have been replenished and banks have taken an axe to costs. The focus is now on innovation and growth. We asked Richard Dratva, our Chief Strategy Officer, what will help financial institutions during this transformation, and what they can expect in 2018.

Anesa Sebecevac | Which trends can we expect to see in banking in 2018?

Richard Dratva | Here are my top three:

With the introduction of PSD2 we can certainly expect to see open banking.

Financial institutions and fintechs who really want to pursue open banking will need a financial ecosystem.

And if such an ecosystem is going to be attractive, it needs plenty of data analytics and AI.

Anesa Sebecevac | How can banks prepare for this?

Richard Dratva | Those just starting to prepare now really need to move things along quickly. Companies from all industries must rethink their business models, properly define their approach and then implement this as quickly as possible – the right choice of digital platform, such as our Digital Banking Hub is an important factor here.

Anesa Sebecevac | How does the digital transformation influence innovation management in a company?

Richard Dratva | Digitisation makes everything faster. Therefore, innovation management must be managed by people who also enjoy working at a faster pace, who can "sniff out" the customer benefits behind the technology and who will not be threatened by digitisation. As obvious as this sounds, it is still not often the case, in particular in wealth management.

Anesa Sebecevac | Which skills do specialists need in order to survive in the digital environment?

Richard Dratva | Ambidexterity. Specialists must be extremely agile. But they also need to hold on to efficiency.

Richard Dratva | Even a small bank can offer its customers a successful and attractive ecosystem. Particularly when it comes to financial matters, people only trust a limited number of representatives or institutions. You don't want to ask all 1.3 billion Facebook users. These trusted parties must make sure that they can be reached in a simple way via their ecosystem.
As Ludwig Volk, Head of Product Management at ELAXY | CREALOGIX, has already said, even before digitisation, banks were part of an overall system. However, from a technological perspective, it was much more difficult to put this connectivity into practice. Today we are seeing a strong drive towards change and have the tools at our disposal to make it a reality as part of a digital ecosystem.

Anesa Sebecevac | CREALOGIX supports banks with the digital transformation. Can you reveal how we are remaining innovative ourselves?

Richard Dratva | Openness to innovation is part of our culture; it's on our daily agenda, and our ever stronger international focus also helps us with that. Expansion enables us to gain expertise and the inspiration we gather has an influence on the development of future-oriented products. In addition, we introduce catalysts of innovation, such as our WowLab, and regularly participate in exchanges in the fintech community, for example at the Finovate shows.

Dr. Richard Dratva

From 1987 to 1991, Richard Dratva was employed as an internal consultant with the Swiss Bank Corporation (today: UBS AG). From 1992 to 1994, he was engaged as a research associate at the Institute of Information Management at the University of St.Gallen. From 1995 to 1996, he acted as a consultant with Teleinform AG before becoming a founding member of CREALOGIX in 1996.